Shattered Harmonies
by Darkchilde
Summary: Memories are strange things...*Part One of the Broken Symphonies Trilogy*


Disclaimer: What is Disney's, is Disney's, and what is mine ain't theirs. This is the first part of a new trilogy that I'm writing called Broken Symphonies--and it's not a happy storyline. It's different than just about anything that I've written before.. (hopefully--that's what I was going for with it!). This is _actually _the middle of the trilogy--Disjointed Melodies is the first part, and that will be posted last. Broken Chords is the next story, and it is the final part of the trilogy. Don't ask me why I'm writing and posting it this way--I'm just strange. Anyway, without further ado...

Shattered Harmonies 

She found the guitar under her bed. 

For a long moment, after she had drug out the dusty brown leather case, she had just looked at it, her heart turning over in her chest. The guitar. _His _guitar. He had given it to her, right before he had left, and when he was gone, she had stuck it under her bed. It reminded her too much of him, and every time she thought of him, her stomach twisted, and her heart dropped to her shoes. 

So she stuffed away her memories of him, just like she stuffed away the guitar, hiding all the little demons that haunted her--still haunted her. All she had thought she had had until now was the single picture she allowed herself to keep on her beside table, set there as a reminder of a past she knew she couldn't, shouldn't forget, no matter how much she wished she could have.

But as she brushed her fingers across the dusty surface, an aching longing filled her, and, against her better judgment, she flipped the worn gold hinges of the case and opened it. The old guitar inside looked much the same as it had the very last time she had seen it--still dark brown wood, worn smooth by years of loving handling and skilled hands running across the surface. 

Before she really realized what she was doing, she had lifted the instrument from it's case, and cradled it in her hands, just the way he had showed her. For a moment, she just held it, her mind a sudden swirl of memories as she let the walls she always kept up around her thoughts of him come crashing down like Jericho. 

She plucked the guitar strings softly, the haunting sounds floating through the room like ghosts. In a way, they were--the old guitar in her hands hadn't been played since...he had died. A hint of a smile touched her hazel eyes when she remembered the way she use to sit in his lap, and he'd wrap his arms around her and they would play the guitar together, his long musician's hands pulling beautiful music from the instrument in her hands. 

An ache filled her heart, and she sat the instrument down beside her on the bed, fighting back the tears that threatened at the back of her throat. Crying wouldn't change anything--he was gone, and he wasn't coming back, no matter how much she wished other wise. 

A particularly flat note broke her out of her reverie, and she smiled a bit ruefully. She had never had any talent at music--not like him, anyway. She remembered the beautiful sounds he use to be able to create with his voice and this instrument, the haunting melodies that danced in the air and painted pictures of vibrant colors and melting light in her mind and her heart. 

He use to try to teach her to sing with him, and had always laughed teasingly when she hit some terribly wrong note. But he had always gone back and tried to show her the proper way to do it. Even though she realized that he probably knew he was never going to get anywhere with his teaching, he kept at it, determined to pass on his knowledge of music to her. Even though she never quite grasped it, she had always loved it--it was something that the two of them had done together. 

When he was gone, she had pushed away that love, those memories, locking them away with the rest of her thoughts of him. A sad little smile touched her lips--if someone could go in to her brain and look around, they find every recollection of him tucked away in one little room, with great big red letters spray painted across it--do not enter. 

Again, she plucked at the strings, filling the room with a strange, disjointed sound. It wasn't really music--it wasn't really anything but noise. But it sounded bizarrely beautiful to her, and she struck the same cord again. 

And again. 

And again, louder this time.

Louder.

Faster.

Again. 

She raked her fingers across the strings as fast as she could, filling her room with harsh grating sounds, sounds that hurt her ears and her heart, but she continued to pour her emotions out through the 'music' allowing herself the pain she had kept locked up in that one little room to flood through her, filling her to the tips of her fingers and toes. 

That bottled pain had been a poison, spoiling everything she had ever known about him, destroying the good, leaving only the bad. She couldn't think about him with out hurting, without wanting to make him hurt the way he had made her hurt. 

She'd wake up screaming at night, hating him, hating him so much it made her hurt inside. But then the tears would come, and she would want to remember him, wanted to remember something good about him. She didn't know how hard she had fought against herself to hide from the pain, until she realized that she couldn't remember anything good about him. 

The guitar had brought back the good. She remembered now, remembered how much she had loved him, remembered how much he had loved her. Yes, the pain was still there, yes it still hurt, but it was a cleaner ache now, a purer one. 

A splash of water on the top of the guitar was what it took to make her realize that she was weeping openly. Touching her face with the same fingers that had so viciously ripped sound from the instrument in her lap a few minutes before, she wasn't surprised when they came away wet and slick with her own teardrops. 

Taking a shuddering breath, her eyes suddenly focused on the photo beside her bed. Deep brown eyes stared out her, a smile pulling at his bee stung lips. The same guitar that she held in her hands was cradled in his, his trademark leather jacket slung around his shoulders, his dark hair falling in his face. 

That was how he was suppose to look--that was how she wanted to remember him looking. But when she closed her eyes at night, that was the image she saw.

Scarlet on ivory. 

Deep brown eyes staring vacantly into space.

A bath tub full of blood red water. 

A scream that was still lodged in her throat. 

Pain gripped her in it's iron grasp, and she let the sobs that always hovered at the back of her throat finally be heard. Bowing her head, she touched her forehead to the top of the guitar, her tears staining the wood once more. 

"Oh Daddy...why?" Janie Waite whispered to the spectra of her father. 


End file.
